A Thousand Miles to Freedom (18 page)

My boyfriend hated North Korea's Stalinist regime with a passion. With him by my side, I started to develop my own political views, and I realized the extent of the horrors committed by the dictatorship. In his opinion, I wasn't critical enough of the regime. He was very politically minded and wanted to see the regime collapse, while the majority of defectors in South Korea maintain a low profile and prefer to focus their efforts on integrating themselves into South Korean society. I understood my boyfriend's passion, but for me, my motivation was a little different. More so than toppling the dictatorship, I wanted to give a voice to my people to the north who had been forgotten by the world.

To keep my spirits up, I started to participate in a hiking club for North Koreans. Certain weekends, we would climb the tall mountains that surround Seoul. We helped one another and also had a lot of fun doing so. I also started attending a Protestant church led by a North Korean pastor. I was not particularly religious, but at least now I felt like I was part of one big family.

Sometimes, the family element seems to be missing in this country, whose economy is so vibrant, but where everyone follows his or her own path without always paying attention to the people around them. This feeling is made all the stronger because, even though I consider myself to have successfully integrated into South Korean society, there are still things that distinguish me from other South Koreans and make me feel closer with my fellow compatriots from the north. Immigrants always seem to have this kind of nostalgia, though it doesn't diminish our gratitude toward our new country.

*   *   *

Today, while I write this, I am twenty-five years old, and I have plans for the future. Here, I can dream of doing things that I didn't even know existed during my former life. I have been able to start learning about the world. I even went to Russia last year! I traveled to Siberia thanks to a prize that I won along with my friends from the debate team, a club I participated in. We came first place in a competition, and the first-place prize was a trip to Siberia for a week.

I was excited to fly on an airplane again. It was the first time that I had ever traveled for leisure in my life. And besides, we were so proud of ourselves for winning the competition. How could I have even thought this would be possible just a few years ago, living in the misery that was Chongjin?

In Russia, my classmates and I came across quite the surprise. One day, while we were in downtown Vladivostok, we came across some workers on a construction site. Our guide told us that they were North Koreans sent by the Kim Jong-il regime to work overseas and bring foreign currency back to the country. My eyes lit up with curiosity. The guide explained to us that when the men were sent here to work, the regime made their wives and children stay behind as collateral, to make sure that these workers wouldn't escape, like we had, from the “socialist paradise” founded by Kim Il-sung.

Upon seeing these workers, I felt my heart break. I naturally felt drawn toward them. I was burning with the desire to speak to them. But that would, without a doubt, only bring trouble to all of us. And what if there were North Korean police officers around? The images of our interrogations at the border, after we were arrested in China, ran through my head. It would be a terrible risk. Sadly, I left these poor compatriots of mine without speaking to them.

*   *   *

In Seoul, I have built a new life for myself. I feel at ease here. My favorite place to spend time is a little caf
é
near my apartment called Doctor Robin. I often spend hours there with my white laptop studying or just daydreaming. There, I feel at ease. I like calm environments and dislike loud noise.

Life in South Korea has presented me with another gift: here, I feel that if I believe in something, I can accomplish it. It is a hope without any cost. My first objective is to get my college diploma, and then to get a master's degree, though I'm not sure in what subject yet. But before that, I'm going to take a gap year to reflect, improve my English, and perhaps travel and discover the world. I'm also trying to earn a scholarship to study in America. It would be an incredible opportunity, so my fingers are crossed.

Later down the line, I want a career where I can give hope to others. I imagine myself becoming a child psychologist. When I was in China, I saw so many children without mothers, I saw so many boys and girls abandoned and left to fend for themselves, that I began to realize the importance of childhood in the construction of a personality. Maybe it is because my childhood was in part stolen from me. Maybe it is also because I still think about my brother, whose fate worries me to no end.

The summer he was eleven years old, the three of us—my mom, Keumsun, and I—went back to China to see him during our vacation. As I said earlier, with our South Korean passports, we had nothing left to fear.

We arranged this trip via telephone with my brother's father, the farmer, and we planned to meet at Yangzi, a city in the north of China where there is a strong Korean community. We promised to take the farmer and my brother around China on a tourism trip, and to pay for everything ourselves.

After a night on a boat on the Yellow Sea and a long train ride, we walked up to the spot where we had arranged to meet up, in front of an enormous shopping mall. My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. I was going to see my little brother again! He was two years old when I left him. Would he still recognize me? There was also some apprehension in the air, particularly for my mom. For the first time since we'd left for Shanghai, we were going to see the farmer, the man who had made us suffer so much.

On the sidewalk of downtown Yangzi, the crowd swarmed around us, and I wondered if I was going to recognize them. They had probably changed quite a bit. But in fact, we had no difficulty finding them. Standing in front of the entrance, the man and the little boy were easy to distinguish: in the middle of these businessmen, they looked like hobos, with their dirty and tattered clothes. I felt sorry for them, and I was quickly overcome with pity. Our eyes met, and we recognized each other immediately and made our way through the crowd. Our reunion went well. The farmer smiled and seemed genuinely happy to see us—it was quite surprising. He had aged a bit; his hair had grayed and his skin was more sunburned than ever before.

My little brother hardly paid any attention to me and behaved like a coarse and uncouth preadolescent. I quickly became shocked by his lack of manners and lack of education. At the restaurant, he behaved like a spoiled, poorly raised child, and acted on his every whim. I tried to talk to him, but the only thing he was interested in was playing with my iPhone. Right away, I decided to go buy him some new clothes, so that he would look presentable. Mom had been sending a hundred thousand won (about a hundred dollars) to the farmer each month to help her son. It was not considered a large sum in South Korea, but in the Chinese countryside, it was not a negligible amount. Alas, it looked like the farmer was keeping the money for himself, rather than spending it on his son. Sometimes, we also sent clothes to my brother. When we asked the farmer what he'd done with the clothes, he nonchalantly responded that he'd sold them all. I felt so disheartened.

Then we took our trip to Shanghai as tourists. We wanted to make the farmer and my brother happy, but the longer we spent together, the angrier I felt. My mother was financing the entire voyage using the money that we had worked so hard to earn, while my little brother and his peasant father behaved like dirty freeloaders. We went to an amusement park in Shanghai, and we even saw a 3-D movie—the tickets cost a fortune!—and yet my little brother always asked for more. And his father didn't say anything about it.

I told myself that we couldn't let this child remain in such conditions, at the hands of this barbaric farmer. I wanted to bring him back to South Korea with us no matter what.

In the middle of the trip, an argument broke out between me and my mom about this subject. She did not agree with me; she didn't think that we should push things. Above all, she didn't feel comfortable around her son, whom she'd originally been forced to bear against her wishes. She only spoke a little bit of Chinese, and so she had a hard time communicating with him, which complicated their relationship even further.

Furthermore, my mom thought pragmatically; she knew how difficult it would be to bring Chang Qian to South Korea. At first, when we made contact again via telephone once we arrived in Seoul, the farmer had told us that he'd let my brother join us. Now, he was a bit more hesitant.

“One day,” he'd say, giving no more details. He was afraid of losing his only son. And he undoubtedly also feared that he would no longer receive money from us in South Korea the day the little boy left to stay with us.

My mother also knew that it would be a huge financial burden if this boy came with us. Being Chinese, my little brother would not be recognized as a defector by the South Korean authorities. After paying a high price for him to get to South Korea with the help of a smuggler, my mom would have to adopt him, the only way for him to legally stay. And of course, he would have no financial aid from the government, which was reserved only for those fleeing from North Korea.

Furthermore, adapting to this ultracompetitive society, for a young Chinese peasant who did not speak a word of Korean, would be nearly insurmountably difficult, particularly in regard to schooling, my mom insisted. However, I still kept hoping. I told her that it was necessary to bring him back with us, for his future. She didn't listen to me, but I was ready to sacrifice my time and energy to help my brother catch up in school and to teach him good manners. This child was, and still is, very dear to my heart.

During our trip, I tried to speak with him. I had to find some way to convince him to come to Korea of his own volition. If not, his father would be able to accuse us of “kidnapping,” and he would be able to take us to court.

But finding a moment to discuss this issue in private proved to be difficult, because the father was wary of us. He was keenly aware of what we were up to and didn't leave his son by himself even for one moment. His father forbade us from sharing the same room, and during the rare moments where I was face-to-face with my brother, he started pouting and changed the topic of conversation. I had the feeling that his father had already told him in advance not to talk about this subject. All my brother did was ask me for more gifts, to buy him this and that, and he always wanted more.

At the end of our vacation, I had failed in my mission. I returned to South Korea with a heavy heart. When would I see my brother again? Would he be even worse off next time? But I refused to give up. Maybe he would mature as he grew up. Maybe he would distance himself from his uncouth father.

Once per month, I still call him from Seoul. He goes to a calling center, in a village not far from the farm, for this long-distance appointment. I try to maintain the relationship, I try to stay positive, and I am determined to help him build a future, no matter what the cost. It's the promise I've made to myself.

 

17

On Monday, December 19, 2011, at 7:09 p.m. exactly, right around the time I was finishing this book, I received a text message from a North Korean friend, a refugee like me:

“Kim Jong-il is dead!” the text read.

At the time, I just thought it was a bad joke. These kinds of rumors were frequent around here. But my friend confirmed it. The North Korean news anchor, with tears rolling down her face, had just announced the death of the “Dear Leader.” It was true. It was the same woman who had announced the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994. Immediately, I called my boyfriend, the one who had been sent to a labor camp and had suffered so much at the hands of this dictator. Then I called my mom, and I went to meet Keumsun to share this big news. The cruel dictator who had caused so much suffering in our homeland was dead.

“I am so happy to hear that!” my boyfriend told me. But for me, I didn't feel any joy, nor did I feel avenged. There was only one question on my mind: Would the two Koreas finally be reunited?

But I quickly realized that this wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Kim Jong-il's death did not mean the end of the North Korean Kim regime. His third son, Kim Jong-un, was already preparing to take the reins and was ready to do anything to prolong the dictatorship for a third generation. North Korea is the only communist country to have ever been passed down from generation to generation through a hereditary line.

*   *   *

The new dictator Kim Jong-un was only three or four years older that I was, and he was going to decide the future of my country. When I saw him for the first time, I found his chubby face so unsightly that it made me feel a little uncomfortable. However, his youth gave me a sliver of hope. Maybe he would be the one to change the system? Moreover, he had been educated outside the country, in Switzerland. He knew how the rest of the world worked. Maybe this would help guide him in the right direction? A lot of leading experts expressed their doubts, but I remained hopeful.

In any case, he has no excuse, and no room, for error. Because more and more, North Koreans are getting sick and tired of the regime. More and more of them now know that life is better elsewhere, and that North Korea is nowhere near the “socialist paradise” it claims to be.

*   *   *

On April 15, 2012, the North Korean regime was preparing to celebrate Kim Il-sung's hundredth birthday, the birthday of the “Eternal President.” North Korean propaganda had promised the population that the country would become a “rich and powerful” nation by this time. Reading these headlines in the newspaper, I couldn't help but crack a smile, wavering between sadness and anger. When I was young, and when Kim Il-sung was still alive, he had promised us “rice and beef soup” every day. However, more than twenty years later, this simple objective has still not been achieved. I am in a position to judge, because my grandparents and my father died from hunger. And so the promise of a “rich and powerful” nation was a flat-out lie, despite the lavish celebrations orchestrated by the regime.